Tag Archives: lion

This one was a doozy. I was on target with my word count only the first day and the last. The rest of the month, I was very, very far behind in my progress, skipping twelve days of writing. New challenges, all of which can be nicknamed Ethan, continued this month.

Anyway, I made it! I won with 50,515 words at 10pm tonight. That’s pretty good considering I was at about 21,000 just last Thursday, also known as Thanksgiving, which we hosted as usual. It just goes to show that anything is possible with the proper motivation. Since I’ve won every NaNoWriMo I’ve participated in since I started in 2011, I could not let this one go without trying. What I found was that the closer I got to finishing, the more determination I had to make it happen.

Here’s a reminder of my novel’s synopsis and the latest excerpt, the scene that pushed me over the finish line.

A tale based on Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, Hunted Song of Looking-Glass Land re-imagines the second of his two Alice books. Glimpses of original chapters and the use of characters provide a frame of reference for new adventures and insights about the true nature of heroics and villainy in Looking-Glass Land. The teenage girl Song Warber, a Jabberwock, or Wock, wields her singular music-making powers in the struggle of freedom and justice for all Looking-Glass Landers.

A little girl named Alice mysteriously arrives in Looking-Glass Land and stirs up trouble for Song’s family even as both her presence and Song’s threaten the monarchy. Yet, it is only by allying with this alien little girl that Song can fulfill a destiny she only begins to fathom when her family falls into the hands of those determined to tear them apart—the Royals, or chess pieces, of Looking-Glass Land. Alice’s destiny is also at stake as she awakens to the gritty realities of this ailing country. Her triumph will depend on new alliances, betrayals, comings of age, secret support, a bit of magic, open battle, overcoming tragedies, facing fears, and confronting the White King, the Red Queen, and a vengeful Humpty Dumpty.

Can two young girls of vastly different species, upbringings, and worlds ever hope to right the wrongs of the place they inhabit, however briefly, together? The good of parallel worlds may depend on it. And what will become of Song and Alice in the process? It’s a reversal across the chessboard of team loyalties and the realm’s purpose as a land of vivid dreams, uncommon reality, and infinite possibility. Will Looking-Glass Land survive the turmoil?

NEW CONTENT, 11/30/17, 10pm – Presented here unaltered from 1st draft and with a special shout-out to two fellow NaNo writers affectionately known together as “the Unicorn” because they are a prolific husband-and-wife writing team. It’s just magical.

Scene Draft: The Unicorn decides to revolt against the Crown.

Having met Alice at the reception of her and the Lion’s latest fight for the Crown, the Unicorn had become fascinated with this little human girl, a human child, all of human children whom she had thought were just “fabulous monsters.” It had tickled her hooves and made her eyes twinkle to hear that Alice had believed much the same about unicorns. They were bonded now, by the Unicorn’s initiation. “If you will believe in me, I will believe in you. Is it a bargain?” “That would be lovely,” Alice had said. Little did the Unicorn know how much she was to come to believe of Alice in this unique set of circumstances she found herself in.

Outside Drumming Town, the Lion lived to the south and the Unicorn lived to the north, from which they would meet in the middle for their weekly fight for the Crown. Before they headed home after their latest boxing match, the Lion took the Unicorn aside for a confidential chat, bloated as he was on plum cake that had not been sufficiently cut for proper digestion, though their guest Alice had tried to obey Looking Glass Land rules for serving Looking Glass cake by handing it round first and then cutting it.

When the crowd had dispersed, themselves bloated on plum cake and their brains filled with the din of the drumming that was meant, every time, to drum the fighting pair out of town, the Lion and the Unicorn could speak freely, seated on a bench in the circle where they had kicked up so much dust fighting their worthy fight.

The Unicorn did not disagree with this but waited for the rest of what the Lion had to say.

“I have heard a rumor today of the most extraordinary kind, and as my faithful sparring partner, I thought it best to share it with you, get your take on it, you know, to see if you think there may be any truth to it.”

“All right,” the Unicorn said readily, “what is it?”

“Well,” said the Lion, and he looked around furtively, making sure no one lurked listening in nearby. “I heard from not one but two different sources, in the same day no less, that the White King will soon be discontinuing our regular fights for the Crown! Do you believe that? To end such a noble, glorious tradition, and what possible reason could the King have for such an insulting shutting of the door on us like that?”

The Unicorn gasped in shock and smashed his hooves against his powerfully muscled and beautifully bridled and decorated jaw. “Oh no! It cannot be true. It can NOT! We have given him no reason to worry that we might actually win—well, one of us—and actually challenge him for the throne—have we?”

“No, no, of course not, but do you think it has any merit, any chance of being true? If so, we have to do something about it, petition the King or—”

“Will you stop blubbering already!” The Lion snapped, roaring his disapproval, his impatience, before the Unicorn had even let two drops of tears fall from her long white cheeks.

Sniffling continued, but the Unicorn tried to control herself long enough to continue the conversation. But then she let loose again, unable to stop it: “Oh, I knew it! I just knew it! You cannot trust anyone nowadays, not a king, not a queen, not a knight or a– OH! Or, even, perhaps, the sources of your rumor!” Now she had hit upon something.

“Well, that is possible, I suppose. We must be wary in any case. It would be utter disaster, sheer travesty, and just a damned shame if we were not to be able to continue fighting for the Crown!”

“I know, I know,” the Unicorn sobbed. “It would be the end of quite an era, irreplaceable in majesty and moment and beauty and grace and– well, in majesty and moment, anyway.” She had retracted grace and beauty in thinking specifically of the Lion.

“Enough of your jibes, Unicorn. I am more majestic, magisterial, and magical than you can ever hope to be!”

“Oh, what a fight we should have for the Crown now!” The Unicorn piped up, tears staining both her snout and her hooves.

“You see?” the Lion quipped. “Neither the King nor anyone can stop us if we choose to fight!”

“Indeed, but not today,” the Unicorn changed tune suddenly. “I am quite tired out. We had a real bout today, would you not agree?”

“But do you suppose this rumor has anything to do with the visit of that Alice girl we met today?” the Unicorn asked, growing increasingly pensive as the weariness reached her bones and horsey tail.

“Hmm.” The Lion grumbled and growled and snarled a bit thinking about the girl. He did not like her. He liked her even less for the little connection she had managed to make with the Unicorn.

“Oh, stop that! She was perfectly lovely, was she not?” The Unicorn read his grumbles well enough.

He only grumbled deeper in reply.

And so the foundation was laid, when the two would find out how serious things had grown in their realm, for an even greater division between them. They would be forced to choose a side, and Alice would be the deciding factor.

Later, the Unicorn, faced with the choice that had become so inevitable, found it was impossible to forget or dishonor the bargain she had struck with the visitor Alice. When the Unicorn heard that Alice was to be exiled from Looking Glass Land—before they had got to know one another, before the Unicorn would have a chance to ask her all about human life and other humans, before the possibility of replacing one pastime with another had fully materialized—that was the last straw.

It no longer mattered whether she or the Lion took the Crown, or if the White King retained it. The White King would not continue to ruin the Unicorn’s life any further, not if the Unicorn herself had anything momentous and true and noble and gorgeous and magical and mythical to say about it. And she often did.

1,107 words in one sitting

“The Unicorn in Captivity” – the 7th and final piece of the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestry series, original workmanship unknown. This photo by C. L. Tangenberg is of the series reproduction in Stirling Castle, Scotland. Traditionally, along with being a pagan symbol and symbol of Christ, the unicorn symbolizes Scotland, and the Lion England, as Lewis Carroll intended in Chapter 7 of his second Alice novel, Through the Looking-Glass: “The Lion and the Unicorn.”